Changes in Southeast Asian Climate: Response to and Feedback onto Global Climate Change

Abstract:

This study is focused on the long-term changes in the climate over Southeast Asia (SEA) and its adjacent regions. The changes in SEA climate are closely related to the changes in global climate, especially via the changes in ENSO and the large-scale Asian monsoon circulation. In the past decades, both ENSO and the monsoon have experienced remarkable long-term changes, leading to significant climate signals over Southeast Asia and its adjacent regions. This study attributes these climate signals to different factors, emphasizing the contributions from water vapor feedback to surface climate signals, and from cloud and atmospheric feedbacks to the changes in the troposphere.

On the other hand, SEA and its adjacent regions also exert significant influences on the climate outside the regions. Various experiments with NCAR CESM and other earth system models are applied to investigate the impacts of the regional climate on the climate over Africa, Asian-Pacific-American regions, and the southern hemisphere.